The Republican wave that led to the party winning control of the Senate Tuesday didn’t crest at Capitol Hill, as the GOP scored stunning gubernatorial victories in several deeply Democratic states.
Republicans have won at least 24 of 36 state governor’s races up for grabs, with contests in Alaska and Vermont still too close to call.
Tuesday’s GOP victories mean that Republicans will control at least 31 governorships in 2015, the most by either party in 17 years.
The GOP won back governorships in President Obama’s home state of Illinois, Arkansas and the deeply Democratic states of Massachusetts and Maryland.
The party also retained control of governorships after tight election battles in Florida, Maine and Kansas.
Republicans were defending two-thirds of the governorships up for grabs. And while President Obama carried nine of those states in the 2012 presidential election, Republican gubernatorial candidates on Tuesday won in eight.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, attributed his party’s success in Maryland and Massachusetts to the “repudiation of (Democratic) big spending, big tax and policies.
“People don’t want it, and they saw in other states where there were Republican governors that they were delivering results, and that’s what people want more than anything else,” Christie told Fox News on Wednesday. “That’s why (GOP) governors have done so well compared with Washington.”
Christie added that Republican governors will continue to succeed because “we make sure we get the job done, and we don’t have a lot of bickering and arguing and rancor.”
Perhaps the most impressive GOP victory was in Maryland, where Larry Hogan knocked off Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.
Six months ago, few were paying attention to the contest in which Brown was expected to easily prevail. But Hogan focused most of his campaign on the bevy of tax increases approved by outgoing Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration, tying Brown to the Democratic incumbent.
Hogan, who beat Brown by an impressive 9 percentage points, is only the second GOP governor elected in Maryland since the 1960s.
In Illinois, Republican businessman Bruce Rauner defeated Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s bid for a third term.
The candidates had been running neck-and-neck for months. But with Illinois facing a $100 billion shortfall in its state-run pension plans and a $56 billion funding deficit in for government-worker retiree healthcare benefits, Rauner was able to portray himself as the kind of outside reformer needed to improve the state’s fortunes.
Republican Charlie Baker also narrowly beat Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in one of the closest gubernatorial races this year. Baker said the victory was due in part to his message resonating with voters about boosting the state’s economy, improving education and bringing a “bipartisan balance” to a Democratic-dominated state government.
Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback also held back a strong challenge from Democrat Paul Davis to win a second term.
The Democratic Party and its allies had spent millions of dollars in Wisconsin in the hope of defeating GOP Gov. Scott Walker. But while most polls leading up to the election showed Walker with only a narrow ahead, the incumbent won a second term relatively handily, by 5 percentage points.
Walker was boosted by strong sentiment against President Obama, with more than half of surveyed voters telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s exit polls that a majority had negative opinions of the administration.
Exiting polling nationwide showed a majority of voters are unhappy with President Obama’s leadership. But Christie downplayed the president’s influence in gubernatorial elections, “that’s at the federal level.”
“I think what governors did last night was to show (that) on their own individual records they can do a great job,” he said. “I think what it means is, when Republican governors do their jobs they get reelected.”
